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At work, people are likely surfing the web from a desktop or
laptop computer. Other times during the day, they might be
connected via a smartphone, tablet or television. This means at
least one thing for business owners: Advertising
to the right people, on the right device and at the right time of
day can be a multi-pronged hassle. Search giant Google is trying
to simplify this process with an update to its AdWords service.

In a blog post today, Google said it's rolling out enhanced Adwords campaigns, which will
essentially enable advertisers large and small to manage
several ad campaigns at once. The enhanced tool will help
business owners manage all aspects of their campaigns,
including details such as the types of devices, times, and
locations to be targeted as well as their analytics reports
all from one place.

"For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to
someone searching for 'pizza' at 1 p.m. on their PC at work
(perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different
ad to someone searching for 'pizza' at 8 p.m. on a smartphone a
half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone
number and restaurant locator)," wrote Sridhar Ramaswamy,
Google's senior vice president of engineering. "Signals like
location, time of day and the capabilities of the device people
are using have become increasingly important in showing them the
right ad."

Optimized ads: With enhanced campaigns,
advertisers should be able to show their ads across devices with
the appropriate text, sitelink or app without having to edit each
campaign individually, depending on the type of device, location,
time, etc.

Bid adjustments: For instance, you can bid 25
percent higher for people searching a half-mile away or, say, 50
percent higher for searches on smartphones -- all in two simple
entries. No need to bounce between separate campaigns, Google
says.

Advanced reports: The goal is to be able to
measure new conversion types over all types of devices. With
enhanced campaigns, Google says users will be able to count calls
and app downloads as conversions in their AdWords reports. A
business owner could, for instance, track phone calls that result
from a click-to-call ad as a conversion, then compare those to
other types of conversions, such as sales and downloads.

Google says it expects enhanced campaigns to roll out to
advertisers as an option over the next few weeks. The upgrades
will be featured on all campaigns by mid-2013, the company
says.